In light of all the recent rumour-mongering about next-generation controllers, it’s curious indeed to stumble across the presence of this particular patent registration by Sony. It’s 67 pages of Japanese, albeit most of it in the form of increasingly bizarre illustrations.
First, the usual caveat: this might mean absolutely nothing. There’s a tiny, super-slim chance that it’s related to something Sony are working on for PS4 but it’s far more likely that this is just Sony tinkering, and making sure as best they can that nobody else tinkers in the same way.
That out of the way, the patent appears to describe a modular controller that bears some resemblance to the DualShock but features a surface that can have multiple elements attached to it.
The attachments don’t have “electrical circuits”, but the main controller unit has some kind of touch sensor that the attached element fixes onto. Basically, it looks like the extra bit touches the controller, and makes things happen in-game.
Examples shown a steering wheel, or a gear stick.
It’s tricky to imagine that this would come to fruition, it seems too fiddly to be practical, at least in the examples shown. That said, there’s considerable discussion just now about the potential new controller, so this seems timely enough to warrant a little big of speculation. Right?
avengerrr
Nice concepts.
Sympozium
Dualshock henshin!… *transforms into a steering wheel*
Kennykazey
I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at, but the little instruments are cute. Wouldn’t mind some piano and trumpet action on my dualshock. It would change QTE for ever.
OnlineAssassin77
Erm what the!
colmshan1990
Very strange.
I see the valves of my trumpet…
Harmonix to make Jazz Band? It’d be the best music game yet!
cam the man
Not sure what to make of those images?
Hope they don’t mess with the Dualshock too much, a touch pad could be useful though.
The Von Braun
Sony:bringing back the Konix Multi-System from the dead, but this time as a PS4 controller, you heard it here 1st. :-)
Mind you, would’nt be the 1st time a retro control method been dug up and pased off as new:Motion Control, touch screen, voice commands…..
I’ll get me cloak….
hazelam
what’s with the furry part in the last image?
what on earth is that for? O_O
Bilbo_bobbins
adult games coming to the ps4? lol
rept0n
Looks crazy – SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!!
Lanselta
My thoughts exactly!!! WE HAVE BUSH!
KeRaSh
Pony Brushing Simulator 2014.
It’ll be a launch title! :P
The Lone Steven
Sponsored by Tesco and Tesco’s own brand burgers come free with every purchase.
hazelam
carpet licking simulator? ^_^
too much?
hazelam
of course if that is true, where’s the tongue module? ^_^
now that’s definitely too much.
Dummy01
Don’t touch the Dualshock. For the moment it has in its back a huge amount of games (more than 5000) in three generations which handles them perfectly. For the new type of game (!) where DualShock is not appropriate and need more buttons or whatever, connect a keyboard to your PSxx or better use a PC. This is SPARTA… sorry… this is console gaming.
Sympozium
Ditto
TSBonyman
sigh…anyone find their holodeck plans yet? ..:/